Archive for December, 2008

Posted on December 18, 2008 - by Wayne Sutton

My one month social media job with Terrell Owens aka T.O., Changing a personal brand.

 

While working out this morning and watching Terrell Owens on ESPN being interviewed by Stephen A. Smith I felt like I was watching another athlete trying to reach out to the public to tell his side of the story to protect his image but failing to do so. I think at this point its safe to say that if Dallas doesn’t win the Super Bowl, T.O. will be gone and blamed for their disappointed season.  But T.O. has a bigger problem, he has an image / personal brand problem. T.O. is a very talented and gifted athlete but like most “troubled” athlete the media loves them because they make news. They are like T.O. Himself said in the interview the “villains” in sports and if you look at they way sports news or any media for example would talk about Shaq in one segment and then T.O. in another you’ll be able to tell that Shaq is Superman and T.O. would be Lex Luther.

 

So what is T.O. to do? He said today in the interview that because of the way the media and people view him he can’t get endorsement deals like other athletes. I think his buddy is still doing those “chucky soup” commercials. We’ll I’m not sure who is handling Terrell Owens  marketing or who advised him to talk to Stephen A. Smith about the Cowboys after rumors about a possible altercation and sideline arguments with his teammates but as social media strategist this is what I would do to “TRY” to change his personal brand using social media. 

My suggestions to Terrell Owens as his social media strategist

1. No more interviews with media (print or tv) besides after game required interviews and in those, keep it short. 
2.  If you must do an interview have your teammates with you
3.  Make http://terrellowens.com a more personal website and not a selling tool. Record personal videos on the site, talking about pre-game, family and community events. Include your teammates, family and friends with a good image.
4.  Have a personal photographer around and upload images to flickr of your non football life but not doing anything crazy. (going to the club, girls etc) Think like those flickr pictures of Barack Obama on election night.
5.  Create a fun fan user generated contest that includes kids.
6.  Stop talking so much and try not to look so hollywood, we’re in a recession people like someone they can relate with.
7.  Live stream charity events, using ustream.tv or mogulus
8.  Have a weekly fan only online  Q&A moderated live video show
9.  Blog daily, it can be short during the season but during the offseason let everyone know what you’re doing.
10.  Take responsibility for your actions and stop yelling at your coaches and teammates during games in front of the world.
11.  Get more involved with technology and businesses, help fund a few startups and encourage others to be successful
12.  Start a video UGC site called: I am T.O. so other people can talk in 3rd person about you
13.  Allow his online community manager to see what others are saying about him to reach out to them or leave a comment
14. Create a Terrell Owens iPhone application like Lil Wayne Where people can dress like T.O.,  workout tips, and a mini football game
15. Create a fun workout video…dude you’re in great shape!
16. Create a twitter account and use it, then after you score your next touchdown pull out your cell phone and tweet. “I just scored a touchdown did you see it? “

Now I’m not sure if all or anything of these ideas/suggestions will work and a lot does have to do with T.O. Himself changing but I think if you could break down the walls of T.O. the football player and get to know Terrell Owens the man you’ll either start to like him, say he’s not that bad of a person, he’s just like me or T.O. will never change.

 
Either way, if someone from Terrell Owens camp is listening I asked the question on twitter “What are 3 things you don’t like about Terrell Owens?” and see some of the responses below. If you don’t hire me, hire someone and just play football. 

@mortimas: @waynesutton nothing, he is great… except for the arrogant d-bagness

@5Alarms: @waynesutton with terrell owens its never his fault and he wants someone to cry for him. everything comes back to that

@ronaldlewis: @waynesutton T.O. is a bit arrogant at times. The quickest way for me to lose interest in someone is when they blast people with an ego.

@ujdmc: @waynesutton mouth, ego, and willingness to blame everyone else while not wanting to be held accountable.

@MigWickert: @waynesutton leave the poor guy alone. I don’t like the sports media most of the time- phony so called experts- what a joke.

@ChrisTejeda: @waynesuttonspeaking about himself in the third person.

@MIKEMCGHEE: @waynesutton ok Saturday we gon kick but. WE GON BEAT BALTIMORE. I LOVE UR POSTS TOO. VERY INFORMATIVE. IM A FAN.

@CInscoe: @waynesutton 1) He won’t shut up. 2) He blames everyone else for his problems. 3) He can’t back up his talk.

@browning: @waynesutton 1. nothing 2. nothing 3.nothing – TO is the man, he is just misunderstood

@TiffanyPR: @waynesutton-Cocky, arrogant & off his rocker at times. But those may all be qualifications of a professional football player. LOL.

@vikingsports: @waynesutton Appearance of arrogance, he’s cocky & doesn’t adequately defend himself.

@amitsomani: @waynesutton Haven’t followed him a while, but he sure was way TOO arrogant.

@eyediom: @waynesutton Everything I don’t like about T.O. I’ve read/heard from a homogenous group of journalists. Hope most of it’s true, if not ..

 

Posted on December 17, 2008 - by Wayne Sutton

Why I owe twitter money & you do too. Plus my thoughts on the twitter business model.

Ok by now everyone should know what twitter is and how it works, if not watch this video Twitter in Plain english and if you still need help hire me for a one on one training session via @Tweetshops. But why is twitter creating all this buzz on the internet?  Some say twitter is just an online public version of an irc chat.

Twitter started being just a low key “microblogging” social network that only a few serious geeks used to share urls and information about what’s happening in the technology community. In the beginning a lot of the links and conversations were around Engadget, Gizmodo and TUAW. How do I know; I was number 847 to sign-up for twitter.

Now everyone one from mommy bloggers, to main stream journalist, to marketing companies and just about your everyday internet user has a twitter account (almost). Dell just announced that by using twitter they have generated $1 million in revenue and you can best believe others are trying to do the same.

So to my point, “why I owe twitter money and you do too”. For me it’s simple, I evaluate the value of my network and brand now before a year ago. I ask myself “How many people knew Wayne Sutton before twitter?” Think about it for a second, how are you using twitter in your day to day lives? Especially if you’re a blogger and using twitter to post to your twitter profile for traffic or if you’re using twitter for ideas to write blog post.

Even though twitter is just a “tool” that allows conversations and relationships to grow for the world to see, think about how often you use the tool and what the tool was used for in 2008 (earthquakes, fire, politics, etc). I was recently asked on twitter about the site Tweetwasters that’s measures how much time you have spent on twitter by @jtobin and in a blog post from Microblink. Tweetwasters says I’ve wasted 6.57 days on twitter.

 

My response was, ”For what twitter has done for me it’s worth every second. #lovemyfollowers “ view my tweet here.

In terms of what kind of business model twitter releases in 2009, I’m not sure but below are a few that I think they will implement and if I have to pay for a monthly subscription for twitter, show me the checkout button because I’m buying.

My top five people who I think owe twitter money.

1. @BarackObama – used twitter (and social media) to become President
2. CNN & @Ricksanchezcnn – we all know how the news media industry is doing, Rick has a show call has a new show called “join the conversation”, congrats
3. @GaryVee – I love this man, built a great following and used twitter to promote his http://winelibrary.com TV shows
4. @zappos – Used to twitter for marketing and customer relationship building
5. Anyone who’s selling a twitter iPhone app or using twitter api for a 3rd party site & selling ads on it.
6. About to add @hubspot to the list too, using twitter for marketing, (good job guys)

My predictions on how twitter will make money:

1. Top right ad above profile information
2. Inline ads between tweets, with option to remove if you’re a subscriber
3. Corporate network twitter accounts via company name, or email (like yammer)
4. Sponsored tweets and allow others to create a sponsored tweet monetization system (magpie)
5. Paid background features: Allow css and html custom backgrounds
6. Paid group & tweet features: more than 140 characters or video/image posting (like pownce)
7. A paid follow service, if you want follow more than 500, 1,000 or 2,000 friends
8. Custom search data information sold to news/media or marketing companies
9. Paid API features.

I’m not sure if twitter will use any of these methods to make money but if their business model works in 2009, I might be writing a blog post called “why twitter owes us money for promoting their site”, encouraging others to sign up and now they are making millions. Only time will tell.

I’m @WayneSutton on twitter, a social media strategist & technology evangelist with 11,525 followers. If you’re looking to use twitter or social media for your business contact me.

 

Who are your top two or five people who I think owe twitter money also?

Do you feel that you owe twitter money too? Let me know in the comments.

Posted on December 15, 2008 - by Wayne Sutton

Talk Social News episode 17# MC Hammer, on social media, the music industry & twitter. Need we say more?

There are a lot of fake celebrity accounts that get started on twitter, just ask Shaq (@THE_REAL_SHAQ) but if you get followed by an account called @MCHammer don’t block him or think it’s a fake account because it’s the one and only MC Hammer (http://mchammer.com) . So what is Hammer doing on twitter, well you’ll have to listen to the podcast for that, but we had the privilege to chat with the one and only Hammer himself about how long he’s been blogging, his thoughts social media and the music industry, who introduced him to twitter and more.

If you’re been wondering what Hammer has been up, Hammer is currently the co-founder of DanceJam.com a user generated dance social networking site and is still involved with the music industry. We also took a few questions via twitter and if you thought Hammer was just a rapper who made Hip Hop classics, like “U Can’t Touch This” and “Let’s get it started” then I must say that you only know maybe 5% of Hammer.

Hammer is one of the smartest entrepreneurs online today and we’re excited to have interviewed him. Take a listen.

The interview: Talk Social News Episode 17 – length 48.52 download or click to play:[audio:Talksocialnews-0017mchammer.mp3] Subscribe to podcast in iTunes:

Other segments of the podcast are:
What the blog:

Google Friend Connect (http://www.google.com/friendconnect/) vs Facebook Friend Connect (http://developers.facebook.com/connect.php)

Fail of the week:
1. Wayne Sutton, lost a podcast interview with Centernetworks.com, Allen Stern (I’m sorry man!)
2. Economy and layoffs

News this week
WordPress 2.7 – http://wordpress.org/development/

Google Chrome out of beta- http://www.google.com/chrome
UNO iPhone app – http://www.tuaw.com/2008/12/07/first-look-uno-for-iphone/
NC Startups Blog post on social media – http://idek.net/vr
PastBud, iPhone copy & paste – http://pastebud.com
twitter to friend feed contact sync – https://twitter2ff.appspot.com/
Jennifer Anderson GQ cover (Is this the best magazine cover ever?)

Also being that I lost the podcast episode with Allen Stern , please check out: